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Name My Chicken!

Well, it’s finally happened. After about nine months of chicken ownership, I have six fully productive layers. Woot!

The first to lay an egg was Muffy, the artsy little Araucana who has pumped out a pretty blue-green pastel egg pretty much every day since.

The last to lay is also an Araucana.

We first called her Cleopatra, because of her dramatic eyeliner.

Her so cute.

As she grew into an adolescent with a thick black ruff who didn’t lay a damned thing, we called her Beardsley. She’s the smallest in the flock. She contributed very little from what I could tell, except as a pecking post for the other birds.

When I considered stewing her, Jim and the kids started covering for her. “I think that egg is from Beardsley!” Zadie would announce when I’d bring in a blue egg from the coop.

“Nope. It’s a Muffy,” I’d reply while sending my friends Eve and Eric at Salt Fork Farms another text asking if it’s ethical to cut a chicken from the flock if it’s not pulling its weight.

Jim would pretend to speak in a Beardsley voice out by the coop: “Oh geez! I just laid an egg! Oh, it’s such a beautiful egg! But I’m going to hide it because I don’t want to be braggy!”

“She’s not laying,” I’d say. “There’s nowhere to hide an egg in that coop anyway.”

Then, one spring day, on my birthday to be exact, I found in the laying box a teeny tiny blue egg, bright as a robin’s. Beardsley had started her engine at last.

But I didn’t get another egg for a few more weeks. Another tiny one. And a few more weeks: tiny again.

I promised Beardsley that I’d give her a lady name if she got on board with the program.

She must have listened, because she lays every other day now as the days heat up. The eggs are still really small, but they’re vibrant in color, and I kind of like them for decorative purposes.

So I’ve got some options for Beardsley’s new lady name. And I could use your help in choosing.

Isn’t your cat named Bill Clinton? I’m not sure he would appreciate a chicken for a spouse. How about Madelaine Albright? The hen does look a little like her and they both seem to be into brightly colored decorative accessories.